Gulf oil spill bad, but how bad? (NYT)

[lumberjack_jeff]

From the NYT

The ruptured well, currently pouring an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil a day into the gulf, could flow for years and still not begin to approach the 36 billion gallons of oil spilled by retreating Iraqi forces when they left Kuwait in 1991. It is not yet close to the magnitude of the Ixtoc I blowout in the Bay of Campeche in Mexico in 1979, which spilled an estimated 140 million gallons of crude before the gusher could be stopped.

And it will have to get much worse before it approaches the impact of the Exxon Valdez accident of 1989, which contaminated 1,300 miles of largely untouched shoreline and killed tens of thousands of seabirds, otters and seals along with 250 eagles and 22 killer whales.
<snip>
“Right now what people are fearing has not materialized,” said Edward B. Overton, professor emeritus of environmental science at Louisiana State University and an expert on oil spills. “People have the idea of an Exxon Valdez, with a gunky, smelly black tide looming over the horizon waiting to wash ashore. I do not anticipate this will happen down here unless things get a lot worse.”
<snip>
“The sky is not falling,” said Quenton R. Dokken, a marine biologist and the executive director of the Gulf of Mexico Foundation, a conservation group in Corpus Christi, Tex. “We’ve certainly stepped in a hole and we’re going to have to work ourselves out of it, but it isn’t the end of the Gulf of Mexico.”

[FrenchieCat]

1. Words of encouragement.....

I pray they pan out. :(

[bluestateguy]

2. I just hope that a ot of jobs can be created in the cleanup

With priority given to people who lose their jobs b/c of the spill.

[DCBob]

3. True and encouraging but the seriousness of this is highly dependent on stopping the flow ASAP.

If this leak goes on unabated for weeks or months we will see an "unprecedented environmental disaster".

[Kablooie]

4. Historic oil spill? Hey, no problem. Don't worry ...

And this wonderful post from the Free Republic:

All seawater is a certain % crude oil.

It is abundant, seeps from the ocean floor in amounts that make the most ravenous oil company froth at the mouth and is the earth's most natural renewable energy source.

I fail to understand the hysteria.

---

So there you go. Nothing to worry about. Go back to sleep. All is well because the conservatives say so.


ZZZZZZZZZZ.

[Oregone]

5. Anyone know what the impact of those two events were on the world's oceans?

How were they cleaned up? Did currents carry it everywhere? Was the habitat and sea life devastated locally? Did that much oil in the water really not have a massive global impact? Are people being hyperbolic about this one then, or are some conditions simply different to make it worse?

[DCBob]

6. Here's an impact report about the Ixtoc spill..

http://www.gomr.mms.gov/PI/PDFImages/ESPIS/3/3931.pdf

[Oregone]

7. Thanks, but doesn't have much to do with the environmental toll

(which is much of the concern here).

Though, if sea life is really to be impacted, it should subsequently hit commercial fishing and tourism.

[DCBob]

8. Yes, I agree. I have been trying to find information on this since yesterday..

and havent found too much. I am also wondering what the differences were. I think it may have something to do with the fact that it was farther from shore so it had more time to evaporate, degrade and dissipate before it hit the TX coast. Not sure though.

BTW, Here is another report that has more details..

http://www.gomr.mms.gov/PI/PDFImages/ESPIS/3/3929.pdf